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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Yeah, I Got Some Baggage - On Southwest

The bookends to my week and a half vacation were a pair of flights on Southwest Airlines. My flight to Florida was uneventful; however, after my return trip, thanks to a pesky stop in Phoenix, my wife and I found ourselves eyeing a luggage carousel that was sadly lacking our bags.

We talked to the guy at the counter, and he said that he wasn't sure where they were, but that he would deliver them to us when they found them, free of charge. This seemed like a good enough idea, so my wife and I went on our merry way.

When we had been home for about five minutes (at approximately 9 p.m.), I received a phone call that said that our bags had come in on the next flight from Phoenix, and they were available to pick up. It is worth noting at this point that we had asked if we should stick around for that flight to come in as it seemed like that was likely where the bags were; we were told that we shouldn't, because it would probably only irritate us if the bags weren't there. Fair enough.

Given that it's something of a trek back to the airport, I brought up the promise of delivery, and I asked if we could get our bags that night. The person on the phone said that that should work, but he said that we probably wouldn't get them until 11 or 12. I figured that this was okay, even though we had just flown cross-country, and so 12 west coast time feels a lot more like 3 a.m. east coast time. And so we waited.

When the clock turned twelve, and we still hadn't received our bags, my wife called Southwest back and asked if the bags were on the way, and the person now said that the bags could be delivered as late as 3:30 in the morning. At this point, we resolved just to go to sleep, and to let the doorbell awaken us.

At 6 that morning, I received a phone call from Southwest saying that the bags were on their way, and that I should receive them between 7 and 8:30. I asked if they could change that to between 7 and 8, since we needed to be at work at 8:30, and I was told that that should be fine.

To Southwest's credit, our bags were dropped off just a few minutes after the clock struck 7.

While I am glad that our bags were not lost forever (for one thing, we had checked some jewelry in one of our suitcases), I have to admit that I wish I would have just been told that the bags would be delivered by 7 the next morning. That way, we could have gotten some much-needed sleep that much earlier. Or, I suppose, I should have just made the trip back down to the airport. That's what I'll do next time.

Have you ever had any bad experiences checking bags? Let me know in the comments.